A tabloid story of the purest sort broke last weekend in London. And beyond its salacious details, it serves a valuable lesson: That Britain’s once-embattled gossip industry is alive and well – and possibly even doing some good.

“The nightmare is if nobody respected the leadership anymore in the Taliban,” said Graeme Smith, an International Crisis Group senior analyst who is based in Kabul, “because then you have no one to talk to.”

Soon after pounding Islamic State positions in Syria, Ankara quickly turned its attention to strike at the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iraq, whose Syrian wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) is a key U.S. ally against Islamic State.